Barcelona

Spent the last couple of days in Barcelona doing all the usual tourist sights: Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia and Casa Mila; Barcelona Cathedral; the City and Maritime Museums; the Boquerio Market; Las Ramblas and the Harbour; cable car to Montjuic...and a couple of hours killing time in the Picasso Museum before the Tapeo Restaurant (just down the street) opened for dinner at 7.00pm.

It’s been many years since I was in Barcelona last and there was much that I’d forgotten.

Here’s some highlights.

The Metro is great, clean and comfortable with frequent service and a vast network. We took it to the Boquerio and, after the obligatory breakfast of hot chocolate and pastry, wandered around the market.

It was the variety that impressed most; sure, there were meats a-plenty, acres of fish, lots of veg and fruit, mushrooms, even chocolates...but tree fungus and several varieties of snails?

Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia Basilica is still as dazzling as ever, its multiple towers soaring above the nearby metro station, the interior awash with light, space and bathed in colour from the many stained glass windows. It’s difficult to remember that this is a sacred space when the eye is constantly roving, now registering the detail of a giant clam holy water container, now drawn upwards where the pillars sprout ‘branches’ like concrete trees. It’s been under construction for 130 years and parts of the exterior are still a building site.

By contrast, the mime artists on the Ramblas were at times disturbingly inventive – fallen angels? - and worth a few coins.

Another delight was the acres of Roman ruins from 1^st century BC to 7^th century AD in the basement of the City Museum. The nearest similar item I’d seen before was in the Archaelogical Crypt at Notre Dane Square, Paris, but this was simply staggering...even a vat for dying clothes marked with remnants of the original bluey-green colour - if the guide is to be believed!

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This is becoming a bit of a travelogue so let me conclude with a couple of final favourites. First, in the Maritime Museum, the magnificent 60-meter long replica of the royal galley that took part in the Battle of Lepanto in 1571.

 

And, finally, the medieval Barcelona Cathedral in the old city with its Gothic cloister with 13 geese (recalling the age of the virgin martyr Saint Eulalia who was murdered in the time of the emperor Diocletan). Remembering more recent martyrs, I lit a candle and paused for a moment at the altar of the Martyrs of the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s.

And what of the Picasso Museum, described as ‘probably the most popular museum in the city if you work on official visitor numbers’? Well, it certainly passed a couple of hours before dinner, and Picasso’s teenage development as an artist is fascinating and well illustrated (and some of the Blue and Rose period works are great) but I believe Picasso regressed after 1917 – but then, don’t mind me, I’m just a happy philistine.